


to the host behind

by ts_smelliot



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Brief suicidal thoughts, Captain America: The First Avenger, Character Study, Dehumanization, Electrostimulation, Eugenics, Forced Orgasm, HYDRA Trash Party, Humiliation, Hurt No Comfort, Imprisonment, Internalized Victim Blaming, Jewish Bucky Barnes, Object Insertion, Other, Rape, general Nazi nastiness, phrenology, prisoners of war, really it’s all bad, some blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:47:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21774673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ts_smelliot/pseuds/ts_smelliot
Summary: “Achtung!” Bucky mocks, pulling all the saliva he can muster into his dry mouth to make the word properly guttural.AHCK-tong.It makes his throat hurt like a bitch, but it gets a couple smiles.This is how he gets chosen two weeks in: with a mouth full of spit and his fucking thumbs up his ass.The guard that catches him is quick, too quick for Bucky to dodge. His meaty fist strikes forward like a snake, grabbing Bucky by the collar and hauling him in against the dirty bars of the cell.He doesn’t look back at his boys then, as he blinks away the blood running into his eyes. Doesn’t let them see how scared he is when the cell door creaks open and they march him out into the dark hallway.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 55





	to the host behind

**Author's Note:**

> I love me some dehumanized winter soldier, but I felt like taking a look at where it started, even before the serum.
> 
> No beta, any errors or inconsistencies in spelling, German, WWII history, or the MCU timeline are 100% my fault. All the usual HYDRA trash warnings apply, please mind the tags!

Before the serum.

I.

Every night, the guards stroll up and down the corridors between the cells, peering past the bars into the grimy faces of their prisoners. The room is dark, made darker by the thick press of dirty bodies, but the guards carry flashlights. They shine them into each cell, laughing as the Americans scatter like cockroaches. Desperate not to be chosen.

It’s Bucky’s job to keep his boys’ spirits up: he’s the sergeant. There’s not much he can do stuck in a cell, but at least he can make them laugh. He’s always been good at that. He makes it his personal mission to coax a laugh out of them at least once a day.

When the guards walk out of earshot, he does impressions. Hooks his lower jaw forward so he resembles the red-headed guard with the underbite; sucks air in and blows it back out heavy, jaw gaping open like the small-eyed mouth breather who likes to linger by their cells during count. He doesn’t know any German, so he just pretends with a series of harsh consonants, hacking his way through their rough language.

“Achtung!” he mocks, pulling all the saliva he can muster into his dry mouth to make the word properly guttural. _AHCK-tong._ It makes his throat hurt like a bitch, but it gets a couple smiles.

This is how he gets chosen two weeks in: with a mouth full of spit and his fucking thumbs up his ass.

The guard that catches him is quick, too quick for Bucky to dodge. His meaty fist strikes forward like a snake, grabbing Bucky by the collar and hauling him in against the dirty bars of the cell. 

He doesn’t look back at his boys then, as he blinks away the blood running into his eyes. Doesn’t let them see how scared he is when the cell door creaks open and they march him out into the dark hallway.

The first time, they bring him into a room bright with halogen lights and filled with strange instruments that remind Bucky of grade school geometry. He doesn’t understand a lick of what they say. Just stands there nervously, arms held still by a soldier on either side of him as the doctor takes his measurements, careful and precise. The points of the calipers skate around his scalp, prick his temples and ears. There’s a pause between each measurement, when the doctor calls out readings in a pinched, nasal voice, and a young assistant in the corner scribbles them down.

Head breadth: (the doctor draws a precise line across Bucky’s head, from the top of his left ear to his right).

“Fünfzehn komma eins fünf neun Zentimeter.”

In the corner, the rasp of pencil on paper.

Head length: (the calipers crawl over his skull, from the space between his eyebrows to the hard ridge at the back of his head).

“Neunzehn komma zwei vier acht.”

Head circumference:

“Sechsundfünfzig komma acht fünf drei.”

Interpupillary distance: (the doctor forces him to look straight ahead at a faded red dot on the wall while he brings the spindly arms of his device too close to Bucky’s eyes).

“Sechs komma drei eins drei.”

It goes on for hours. They measure the width of his jaw, every lump and indent in his skull, the length of his arms from elbows to wrists. They hold up coloured cards next to his eyes, debate at length which shade of blue provides the closest match, investigate the divot in his chin with zeal. All of this is punctuated by the tireless scrawl of the assistant’s pencil.

Most humiliating, they make him open his trousers. It takes several repeated attempts before Bucky understands the command, even more before he finally complies.

“Deine Hose!” the little doctor yells at him, red faced, gesturing wildly at his own crotch. Bucky can only stare back at him with wide, terrified eyes. “Your _trousers_ ,” the man spits in English at last, and a little speck of phlegm goes flying.

Bucky’s hands shake as he fumbles with his belt buckle.

He stands there with his fly undone, not daring to presume what comes next, but the man waves irritably at his underwear. “Those also. S _chnell_.” So Bucky hooks his fingers into the waistband and slowly draws them, pants and briefs together, down his thighs.

“Ah,” the doctor says quietly when he sees Bucky’s cut dick. “Ein Jude.”

Those words make Bucky’s throat go tight. He starts to say something, he doesn’t know what, but the words comes out like a panicked gurgle.

The doctor just waves him off.

“It does not matter, Soldier,” he says. “We are not so primitive here.”

Then he kneels down before Bucky, pushes his spectacles up his nose, and brings his sharp, geometric compass to the head of Bucky’s dick.

Bucky could struggle. He wishes to God he would, but something inside of him is loose and icy with fear. He sees the charts hung on the walls, the lists of measurements for every imaginable part of the human body. He sees the doctor’s movements: practiced, automatic—bored.

He is not the first one. He shuts his eyes and tries not to think about the others.

And then, most bewildering of all, it’s over. The doctor snaps his fingers at Bucky to pull his pants back up and turns away, dismissive. Then the guards are marching him out the door of the little room, back down the hall, and into the stinking cell he shares with nineteen other members of his company.

They dump him unceremoniously onto the ground, and he bounces with the shock with of it. A draught of cold, familiar air rises from the concrete floor, and he breathes it in gratefully. Then he remembers his boys.

He forces his breathing to slow, tries to smooth his pinched expression, and uncurls. They’re all watching him, wide-eyed and wary. He stretches out in the empty space they’ve created, even though it leaves him exposed, and tucks his hands up behind his head. Feigns a smile.

“What did they do?” Morita hisses.

Bucky shrugs. “Nothin’,” he says, like it’s easy. He swallows down the fear that’s been coating his throat ever since they chose him, and tries to smile like he does for the lady at the deli back home to earn an extra slice of roast beef.

Technically, it isn’t a lie. The Nazis hardly touched him. But his belly is cold with fear and there’s a damp chilly patch in his cotton briefs, a reminder of the moment his bladder let go, just for a second, when that little doctor came in close and his sour breath touched Bucky’s skin.

II.

The second time they take him from the cell, it hurts.

They order him to strip down to his undershirt, push him into a chair, and tie his forearms along the armrests. His ankles are bound to the legs of the chair too, and then he’s locked in place. The guards leave them like that: just the doctor and his scribe and Bucky, trussed up and shivering.

For several long minutes, neither the doctor nor his assistant take notice of Bucky. There’s a radio tucked away in the corner, and it fills the room with some warbling German opera. (“ _Tristan und Isolde_ ,” he hears Steve say, exasperated, “come on, Buck, don’t matter if it’s German, it’s _Wagner_ for Christ’s sake”.) The small doctor hums along for a few bars.

Bucky steels himself.

“Why am I here, Doc?”

Neither the doctor nor his assistant look up.

Bucky wills himself to be quiet. It’s better to sit here, he tells himself, waiting quasi-comfortably in this chair, than to face whatever they’ve brought him in for today. This is a lie, and he knows it.

The minutes tick by and the silence, punctuated only by the radio and the rustling of the doctor’s papers, grows unbearable.

Bucky tries again.

“Doctor,” he says, more loudly this time, “why am I here?”

Finally, the little man takes notice.

“Ah!” he says, as if surprised by Bucky’s presence, even though he himself directed the entire process of restraining him. He caps his pen, and turns to face Bucky fully.

“Well, Soldier, you are here for _science_ ,” he says that final word with relish, as though this ought to be a special treat for Bucky.

Bucky’s skin crawls. His heartbeat is loud in his ears.

“Ya know,” he tries to drawl, “I’m not really feelin’ up for a science experiment right now.”

The doctor smiles at him.

“But you have interrupted me,” he gestures towards his array of instruments. “You are growing impatient to start?”

He takes a step forward and Bucky shrinks back before he can stop himself. He shakes his head, the only movement that isn’t restricted.

“No, n—” his tongue is thick in his mouth with fear. It’s difficult to speak. “I’m a prisoner of war—” but the doctor interrupts him.

“Ach,” he soothes, as though he is speaking to a very small, confused child. He pets Bucky’s greasy hair. “We must all play our part, yes?” The doctor bends forward and looks into Bucky’s eyes with a kindly, avuncular expression. “Yes,” he repeats firmly. Then he straightens and turns to his assistant.

“We shall begin, then.”

The assistant turns off the radio and takes up his pencil and clipboard. The doctor reaches for Bucky’s dog tags. His fingers are impossibly soft and a little damp where they touch the delicate skin of Bucky’s throat, and he flinches back violently. The doctor doesn’t seem to notice.

“Subjekt zweiundvierzig,” the doctor dictates, running his thumb over the engravings. In the silence that follows, Bucky can hear that familiar scratch of pencil on paper. “Serial number…” the doctor squints as he reads aloud, “drei zwei fünf fünf sieben null drei acht. A sergeant,” he adds, smiling brightly at Bucky, “how nice for you.”

He lets the tags slip from his fingers and they thump lightly against Bucky’s sternum, muffled by the cotton of his undershirt. He wishes he could feel them against his skin, anchoring him. Instead, he feels only the phantom touch of the doctor’s clammy fingers.

The procedures start.

When they drop him back in his cell, Bucky is sore and aching all over. He can feel each and every hole they left in his body, every little spot where they stuck him with a needle and pulled something vital out. One in the pocket of his left elbow, where they drew vial after vial of blood, until Bucky was sure they could fill an entire milk pail with it. Another in the right arm, and one in his belly, right over his bladder, after he refused to piss in a cup for them.

The worst are the two low on his back, framing either side of his spine. They took him out of the chair for those, laid him out flat on his stomach on a narrow examination table and called the guards back in to hold him still. The little doctor pushed up the hem of Bucky’s undershirt and rubbed the skin there, once, soothingly, and Bucky jolted, trying to see what was happening back there. They used the largest needle Bucky had ever seen when they pulled the marrow out of his bones.

“This is necessary,” the doctor assured him, patting Bucky on the flank as he grit his teeth and whined. “We must be able to compare your data from before the transformation.” Through the rising swarm of pain, tears swimming in his vision, it didn’t occur to Bucky to say, _What transformation?_

III.

The third time the pull him from the cell, they bring him into a different room than before, one filled with people. The sounds of conversation swell, but Bucky can’t make out any of the words. A metal table stands at the room’s centre, a drain set into the concrete floor beneath it. Something is different this time, Bucky knows it.

He feels that prickling rush of heat that comes before a fight.

“More blood this time, huh?” Bravado won’t help, but it’s how Steve would talk, if these Germans were just a bunch of bullies in a back alley.

The guards push Bucky over to the table. He goes easy until one of them reaches for his belt.

“Oh hell, not that again,” Bucky says, and starts to thrash. His adrenaline is rising, and he’s not about to endure the dick inspection rigmarole again, especially not for an audience. The second guard tightens his grip on Bucky’s shoulders, tries to hold him steady while the other one reaches for his trousers, and Bucky jerks, jabs his knee up towards the guard’s midsection.

“ _Hört auf_!”

The doctor’s voice cuts through the room. The sounds of chatter die down in an instant, and Bucky stills, panting. Stupidly, he thinks maybe the wretched little man will explain what’s going on for once.

The doctor adjusts his glasses and addresses Bucky directly, “This is not a voluntary activity, Soldier.”

“Yeah, I figured,” Bucky spits.

The doctor fixes him with a baleful stare, not speaking for a moment. Cold, familiar dread starts to rise in the pit of Bucky’s stomach. “Your participation is not voluntary,” the doctor repeats, “but you do have a choice. You may either remove your trousers on your own, or you may let us remove them for you. Either way, you have only one pair, and you will not receive another.”

He smiles at Bucky, smug like he’s just outwitted a particularly difficult child, and Bucky _hates_ him.

He looks around for a moment at the faces surrounding him, unsure. He waits a beat, trying to think, and then one of the guard lunges towards his belt buckle again.

“No!” Bucky yells, jerking away. He glares at the doctor. “I’ll do it.”

The little man waves at him, an imperious _go on_ gesture, and the guard in front of Bucky steps back. The other maintains his grip on Bucky’s right arm, but lets go of the other so he can reach down.

Conscious of every single person watching him, Bucky brings his hand down to his belt buckle. It’s awkward; he isn’t left-handed, and it takes a minute for him to get the catch to release. Slowly, he opens the buttons on his fly and starts to shuffle his trousers down. He stops when they’re still just barely clinging to his hips. He’s painfully aware of the dark pubic hair springing out above the waistband of his briefs, of the guard’s rough wool coat pressing into his ass, chafing the exposed strip of skin there. He shuts his eyes.

“All the way down please, Soldier,” the doctor says lightly. His voice carries in the quiet of the room, echoing lightly off the concrete floor. “Your briefs too. You may leave your shirt.”

Bucky doesn’t move, still just trying to breathe, and the guard behind him grabs onto his left arm again. He can feel the air stir as the other steps closer, and he shakes he head violently.

“Okay,” he croaks, and when he opens his eyes, all the fight bleeds out of him. Shame twists in his gut, hot and tight.

The guards step back, and Bucky returns to tugging down his trousers and briefs down. He looks over at the doctor, watching his face to see when he can stop. He ignores the audience watching him, tries to drown them out, but he hears a whisper once his dick is out, a woman’s voice, and he can feel the blood flooding his face, his ears going hot.

The doctor doesn’t tell him to stop until his pants are finally pooled around his ankles, the belt still threaded through the loops of his waistband.

He cooperates when they order him to step out his pants. He follows when the guards tug him over to the table, soft dick slapping against his balls when they pull a little too roughly. The guard behind him taps his naked hip, pointing at the table’s surface, and Bucky swallows. He submits to the humiliation, and crawls up onto it.

The metal surface of the table dents and pops beneath his knees, groaning under the strain of his weight when the guards each grab hold of his thighs and wrench them apart. The movement unbalances him and he falls forward at the waist, catching himself on his hands. Another guard steps up to the far end of the table and yanks him forward by the wrists. He’s stretched out, face mashed into the metal tabletop, his knees spread and his ass in the air.

His breath is coming fast, panic making his arms and legs shake so hard he can barely move when they tie his limbs in place. He can’t see much, face down with his arms blocking his view, but he can hear it when they start pulling something heavy towards him, scraping across the uneven floor.

It stops his breath when it finally rolls into view. It’s like a machine from one of his science fiction novels, bristling with knobs and dials and sprouting thick, coiling cables. The audience is hushed now too, watching as the doctor approaches the monstrosity and plucks a small device from the mess of wire and metal. It seems innocuous enough, compared to rest of the machine. Just a little metal thing, shaped like a submarine and less than a foot long, not quite as big around as Bucky’s forearm.

It’s not until the doctor snaps on a pair of thin, latex gloves and produces a tube of surgical lubricant that Bucky understands.

“No,” he breathes, and thrashes against his bindings. But they’re secure, they hold fast. He is agonizingly aware of the exposed parts of himself: his limp dick flapping around as he struggles, his ass up high and on display, open wide to anyone.

The doctor approaches him

“Oh god, no. No, no, _please_ ,” Bucky babbles desperately. The doctor steps behind him and Bucky cranes his neck to see what’s going on, but he can’t, he can’t quite see, it’s just out of the range of his vision.

He goes still when the doctor taps the slimy probe against his asshole, shocked by the cold, intimate touch. His mouth drops open, breath gone animal and ragged, and the doctor slides the wet tip over that little furl of muscle, again and again, catching on the rim. No one, not even Bucky himself, has ever touched him here before. The doctor lines the probe up and presses in.

He shoves it into Bucky’s body faster than he can accommodate, punching a shout out of his lungs. He can feel the skin of his asshole stretch and split around it, and a warm trickle of blood flows down to his balls. His pleas have gone quiet: he’s panting, crying, drool pooling on the table under his mouth. It’s nauseating, how full he feels so suddenly. A heavy, sinking violation unlike anything his body has ever known. His skin is coated in goosebumps, and the muscles of his ass and thighs just keep clenching and unclenching, trying to push the thing out.

“Shh,” the doctor says, placing his palm on the base of Bucky’s spine. “Quiet Soldier. It’s too late. See? It is already inside of you.” He taps on the exposed end of the probe and the vibrations travel down through the metal, resounding deep inside Bucky’s body. He whimpers.

When they turn the machine on and electricity starts to flow, Bucky jolts, smearing his own spit across his cheek. The current forces his body to move outside of his control, shuddering like a puppet. The electricity itself isn’t painful, but it doesn’t feel good either. It’s just _there_ , pressed up at the very centre of him, pulsing and pulsing over a sweet spot he never even knew existed. He realizes he’s moving his hips, humping into nothing in the empty air.

He wants so desperately to die.

The onlookers in the room have pressed in close around the table, watching. The doctor is explaining his procedure to one man in particular, pointing to Bucky’s cock as it fills and hardens without his permission. It’s only when Bucky catches the phrases _involuntary response_ and _semen_ and _innovative solution_ that he hears the man’s accent, realizes they are speaking English.

“Hey,” he slurs, trying to gain control of his voice even as his hips thrust forward all on their own. “You’re on my side,” he tells the man.

The man pulls his gaze away from where the device is nestled heavy and solid inside him, like an egg, and meets Bucky’s eyes.

“You gotta help me,” Bucky gasps. The pulsations inside his body are speeding up, warmth pooling at his centre. He’s making these quick little grunts, _uh uh uh_ , and he can feel his limbs winding tight. His climax is rising fast and he needs to make it stop. He can’t let it happen.

“’m James Buchanan Barnes, Sergeant,” he says desperately, “three-two-five-five-sev—” _uh_ , “—seven-zero-three-eight.” The numbers come out in little staccato bursts as his hips move faster and faster.

The man stares at him for a long moment, his face impassive. Then he turns away, giving his focus back to the doctor and his device.

“ _Please_ ,” Bucky pleads. No one looks up at him. The lower half of his body is just the site of an experiment now. The rest of him is unrelated.

The doctor calls out an order and a pair of gloved hands hold a small, plastic cup underneath the dripping head of Bucky’s cock. He shakes his head. He won’t do it. He won’t give them this.

He does. When he comes, it racks his entire body, pouring out of him and filling up the little cup. Some spills over the side, onto the table below. It doesn’t matter. They’ve already collected enough and still it keeps flowing out of him. He’s rutting into thin air, moaning, _lowing_. A goddamn animal. He loathes himself with a viciousness he didn’t know he possessed.

Someone shuts the machine off, and at last that hellish pulsing stops. Bucky stills. His breath is ragged, loud in the new quiet of the room. He stares at the table inches in front of his face, unable to meet the eyes in his audience.

Slowly, the crowd shifts away, and excited chatter replaces the silence. The show is over. They must have gotten what they wanted, Bucky thinks bitterly. Only the doctor and his two guards remain, holding him still while they clean up.

The doctor makes a soothing noise, petting along Bucky’s flank like he’s calming a skittish horse. His gloved hands snag on the thin hairs that cover his skin, and the sharp friction pulls Bucky back into his body.

He turns his head just enough to see the doctor. The movement is jerky, his neck gone rusted, the entire column of his spine.

“Someday,” he says to the little man, hoarse and sick with hatred. His breath puffs out and fogs up the surface of the table, dotting it with his spittle. He swallows. “After I get outta here. I’m gonna come back and find you, and I’m gonna fucking kill you.”

The doctor doesn’t look up. Just pats his rump mildly, uses a sterile cloth to wipe up the mess of come Bucky’s spilled onto the table.

It hurts to move.

When they bring Bucky back to the cell, he walks gingerly. His limbs feel sore, used. He goes to the far end of the cell, away from the other guys, and leans his back against the bars, sliding down carefully until he’s seated.

He knows the other fellas are all looking his way, he can feel Morita’s worried stare, the nervous glances Juniper keeps shooting at him out of the corner of his eye. Bucky doesn’t look up at them. He bites down hard on his lip and trains his gaze on the floor.

It’s Gabe who breaks the silence.

“Hey Sarge,” he says gently, and reaches out towards Bucky. “Bad this time?”

Bucky doesn’t respond, but when Gabe’s fingertips brush against his arm he flinches, and Gabe pulls back. He knows his eyes are rimmed red and wet, and he wishes he were tougher, wishes he could pull it together for his guys.

When he looks up, Dum Dum’s eyes have snagged on the seat of his pants. Bucky can feel the wetness there, the blood and the once-sterile slick seeping through the cloth. Every time he shifts a little more spills out of him, another hot blurt of shame trickling down to his balls and wetting this thighs. Dum Dum won’t meet his eyes. When he realizes he’s been caught looking, he jerks away, fixes his gaze on some distant point, and that’s almost as bad as the rest of it.

Bucky pulls his knees in close to his body, tries to plant his feet in front of his ass to cover what happened to him. It won’t make much of a difference. They’ll all be able to see the stain next time he stands. He crosses his arms over his knees and tucks his face away.

“Maybe the others’ll come for us soon,” Juniper says. Bucky can hardly hear him over the wet sound of his own breathing.

He sounds hopeful. He sounds like a kid.

“Yeah,” Bucky says, voice muffled into the crook of his elbow, “maybe.”

_There's a breathless hush in the Close to-night--_

_Ten to make and the match to win--_

_A bumping pitch and a blinding light,_

_An hour to play and the last man in._

_And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat,_

_Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,_

_But his Captain's hand on his shoulder smote--_

_"Play up! play up! and play the game!"_

_The sand of the desert is sodden red,--_

_Red with the wreck of a square that broke;--_

_The Gatling's jammed and the Colonel dead,_

_And the regiment blind with dust and smoke._

_The river of death has brimmed his banks,_

_And England's far, and Honour a name,_

_But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks:_

_"Play up! play up! and play the game!"_

_This is the word that year by year,_

_While in her place the School is set,_

_Every one of her sons must hear,_

_And none that hears it dare forget._

_This they all with a joyful mind_

_Bear through life like a torch in flame,_

_And falling fling to the host behind--_

_"Play up! play up! and play the game!"_

\- “Vitai Lampada,” Sir Henry Newbolt

**Author's Note:**

> Fun (weird?) fact: this story was inspired by a common method for testing bull semen. It was developed after observations were made that convicts sentenced to capital punishment became erect during electrocution, and it's currently considered the most humane method of semen testing. It's standard practice to test the semen of livestock animals used for breeding.
> 
> Once, when I was like 12, I came with my dad to work and watched him perform the procedure on a whole pen of bulls. I guess it, uh, ~~disturbed~~ stuck with me more than I realized. 
> 
> If you feel like finding me on [tumblr](https://unclesmelliot.tumblr.com), I'm there.


End file.
